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writers, you find the same pompous diction-the same thrusting aside of the downright and descriptive, and the dragging in by violence of the artificial and indistinct. A lamp is a luminary; a child is a cherub; a servant's message is told with a simile; a familiar sentiment is illustrated by stars and sunshine, and the hero's whereabout is embellished like a description of Olympus. They have no idea that a king is not always in heroics, or that a lady can talk prose, or that the language and ways of ordinary men have anything to do with human nature. They perk up their common-places in holiday dresses as if they thought them too vulgar to be presentable. Like the good housewife who washed the cobwebs from her master's old wine, they think nature not fit to be seen till she has been prancked up and made tidy.

It is a singular feature in the works of Goethe, that, without an exception, they are suggested and formed from incidents in his own life. He never portrays a passion, or amplifies a sentiment, or presents a phasis of human life, which is not either a part of his own history or a subject of the most intimate and minute observation. His works seem to be thrown off like spontaneous phantasms of the progressive changes in his character and situation. He attempts nothing distant, nothing in advance of his existing age and circumstances. His heroes are all of his own time of life, and are run through adventures, it is true, and romantic ones, but only embellished likenesses of his own. Every incident is seized upon as a nucleus for imagination. Every casual expression of a passer-by is a subject for his habitual analysis of character. Every friend and acquaintance and chance-adventurer moves in the great circle of his observation, and becomes an actor in the indefinite and perpetual drama of fancy. He thus secures the very impress and action of life. The minute features, the defects even, the thousand little vanishing lines are arrested and distinctly drawn. His novels read like biographies, and his poetry, unlike the lifted and unessential wanderings of others among the stars, fastens on your sober belief, like the earnestness of a suddenly roused improvisatore. It is no objection to the analogy between his own life and that of his heroes, that their adventures are too many and too extravagant for truth. Such a man as Goethe meets ten adventures to another man's one. Aside from the expression which genius always stamps upon the features, and which wins so unreservedly the confidence, not only of the refined and discerning, but mysteriously of all-aside from everything which opens to him, from without, the secret entrances to the character and peculiarities

of men-there is, in himself, a power, a tact of detection, a knowledge of the causes of human action, which lay bare to him the causes of adventure, and tell him when and where to look for the coming by of those strange realities, stranger than fiction, which are constantly occurring in this misnamed commonplace world. Nothing that passes escapes him. He follows intrepidly and implicitly every lead of circumstance. He encourages the developement of every eccentricity of character. He accepts, with the chivalry of the Red Cross Knight, every challenge to doubtful enterprise. He is never sluggish-never backward-never calculating. There is a beautiful boldness in his temper, which, like the heroes of Irish fairy legends, wins the love of the spirits of his race, and they touch him as they pass and become visible to him. The book before us, which is substantiated as a faithful history of the life of Goethe, is sufficient to prove all that we have asserted on this point. It reads like a fiction.

To those who have not reflected upon the peculiar structure of poetical character, it may appear singular that we should put side by side with the trait we have so long dwelt upon, an unbounded romance. It is true, that, in common men, this quality is rarely united with severe judgment. It is no less true, however, that in genius they are seldom divided; and it is a beautiful proof of the capacity of our nature for a full and equal developement of its powers, that two such opposed qualities as imagination and reason, can, even here, ripen and be perfected together. One can scarce conceive how they should harmonize. The disposition of fancy to color and clothe everything it meets with its own pencil and drapery, and the tendency of judgment to define and analyze, seem an impossible combination. There is, however, a kind of accommodation, if we may so speak, in the exercise of their powers, which effectually prevents discord. The judgment is, of course, the higher faculty, and undoubtedly makes its decisions clearly and independently of the other upon every subject. The exercise of the imagination is rather optional than necessary. It is like the Roman mantle, putting no constraint on the figure it embellishes, and never concealing its strength or proportions. It is a beautiful gift, by which a discovered deformity is hidden, and a color of cheerfulness or joy given to the necessary shadows of life. To borrow a figure of that great essayist, Foster, "judgment is the naked tree with its minute branches perfectly defined, and imagination is the foliage which clothes it." The reason of genius is never blinded by fancy. In the height of romantic adventure, and in the most unqualified devotedness of passion-seasons when less gifted minds

are walking in a dim and confused dream-the eye of genius takes a tranquil measure of its progress, and circumstances are as well remembered as ever, and the object of its admiration as keenly and dispassionately studied. And yet who doubts the earnestness and fervor of such a nature?

Our author's life abounds in the most romantic incident. The susceptibility which is another unfailing attribute of genius, involves him continually in the most singular adventures. His passions, successively, for Margaret the pretty milliner, Lucinda the daughter of his dancing master, and Annette the daughter of his host-all persons far below him in life, and in a country where such distinctions are matters of serious regard—are sufficient proofs of the vividness and power of his fancy. It needs a great deal to color what from a man of his discrimination could not be concealed, the want of the well-bred refinements to which he had been used, the gaucheries of manner, the natural and inevitable materiality of the class to which the objects of his passion belonged. It is evident from his own account that he was never blinded to them, and it is surprising with what minuteness he drew the characters of his mistresses at the same time that he was yielding himself apparently to the most headlong infatuation. There is no concealment or trick practised upon him. He meets Margaret in a house corresponding with her station in life, the resort of a company of rude and vulgar young men, whose intimacy he was obliged to court, and it is only in their presence, and in the intervals of drinking and card-playing, that his acquaintance with her progresses. His imagination converts this scene of coarse carousal into a haunt of refined pleasure, and, though he is continually studying the characters of his gross companions, and shows by his descriptions that he did it faithfully, his passion for Margaret is not at all diminished, and he is restless till the night comes when he may meet her again, and pursue his passion amid the same uncongenial company and amusements. This is the true alchymy. Everything turns to gold at the touch of such a temper as this. The fabled enchantments of Eastern story are more than realized by such an imagination. It makes a different place of the world. The annoyances and the imperfect joys, the cold, dull shadows of indifference, the positive and thick-crowding evils of life, are all changed and colored by its power. The semblances of the perfect and beautiful become real. The exquisite form and bland graces of women, the changing, perishing beauty of nature, the outward show of generous and noble qualities in men, are all true and abiding. It is neither ignorance nor deception. He sees the fickleness of the one,

and the decay of the other, and the hollowheartedness of the third, and, with an instinctive caution, he puts a shield between their failings and his heart, and forgets them. When he is once guarded against injury he believes the world incapable of it, and he goes out among his fellow men confidingly, and still without peril, admitting like sunshine to his heart every ray of courtesy, and yet protected from betrayal by his sleepless but unconscious untuition of character. This is the only power except religion that can "look out far and lovingly on all mankind." Ignorance and simplicity are soon enlightened, and become embittered against a world which abuses their easy nature. The treachery and stinging ingratitude of mankind must be guarded against to be unfelt, and it must be forgiven as religion forgives it, or avoided as knowledge avoids it, not to chill philanthropy and deaden the "fine and loving temper of humanity."

(To be continued.)

CHANGES.

THE billows run along in gold

Over the yielding main,

And when upon the shore unrolled,
They gather up again;

They get themselves a diff'rent form,

These children of the wind,

And, or in sunlight, or in storm,

Leave the green land behind.

Life's billows on life's changing sea
Come alway to Death's shore,
Some with a calm content, and free,
Some with a hollow roar;

They break and are no longer seen,
Yet still defying time,

Divided, and of different mien,
They roll from clime to clime.

All water courses find the main ;
The main sinks back to earth;
Life settles in the grave-again
The grave hath life and birth;
Flowers bloom above the sleeping dust,
Grass grows from scattered clay;
And thus from death the spirit must
To life find back its way.

Life hath its range eternally,

Like water, changing forms;

The mists go upward from the sea,
And gather into storms;

The dew and rain come down again,

To fresh the drooping land;

So doth this life exalt and wane,

And, alter, and expand.

J. O. R.

PRESENT AMERICAN LITERATURE.

He who writes

Or makes a feast, more certainly invites
His judges than his friends, and not a guest
But will find something wanting or ill-drest."

WHILE the events of the last fifty years have wrought so great a change in the moral and political condition of the civilized world, the state of its literature and its intellect has during the same period been subject to its own vicissitudes and undergone its own revolutions. The dark storm of anarchy which hung impending so long over Europe, has been dissolved by powers, which, while in some measure restoring the nations of the continent to their former state of kingly subjection and despotic calmness, did not altogether remove the purifying effects of the previous tempest. Civilized man now enjoys extended liberty, compared with his debasement during the days of feudal government, and Freedom, as she has carried her cheering influence to the door of the European peasant, has been attended by knowledge and virtue as her inseparable companions. The human family as a whole, has been elevated to a higher grade of existence, and the fountains of intelligence, instead of being confined to the use of the noble and the bigot-instead of being restrained in a few deep and almost inaccessible channels-have become the property of man, whatever his condition, and have been diverted to fertilize and make glad the whole surface of the earth.

Happily the sources of literature are not diminished by the continual demands which are made upon them. Like the fire which communicates its heat and its power to all surrounding objects, but which still burns on with undiminished intensity, they have poured forth the deep streams of grave and scholastic philosophy, as they were wont of yore; but have at the same time increased the influences of practical instruction, and enlarged the sphere of elegant belles lettres accomplishments. The old channels may not now be as easily known as formerly, because of the improvements above

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